The First Best Christmas
by starwarsfreak95
Summary: Sam and Grace's daughter has always hated Christmas. She loved Isabel St. Clare, who cared for her every winter, but she wished her Mom and Dad could spend Christmas with her just once.


The first thirteen years of my life, I spent winters with Isabel St. Clare.

She always seemed to know when to come. When my parents had vanished without warning, running as wolves in the cold woods. For as long as I could remember, she'd shown up with her close cropped blonde curls perfectly styled, a box of fresh cookies, and a constant stream of complaints about having to come back to hick town every year that I eventually learned were pretended. In tow, she'd bring her husband, Cole, the not quite werewolf, not quite rock star, not quite scientist but some odd mixture of them all.

She wasn't a mother during those lonely months, but she was close. She brought me to school, made sure I had food, and helped me with homework. She decorated a tree every year, let me help her bake Christmas cookies, and played Santa for me with the gifts my parents collected over the summer and ones she bought herself. She bought me fun clothes and books and music books, taking me to the mall an average of once a week. She even took me to get my hair cut or to get a manicure just because she could.

My friends at school were jealous. "Your aunt is so cool!" "Where did you get that shirt?" "Can I have a cookie?" "Who did your nails!?" Thanks to Isabel, I could have been friends with anyone simply by virtue of my clothes, haircuts, and makeup skills carefully taught over a series of long winter nights. To them, my parents worked all the time and didn't have time to take care of me so my aunt lived with me most of the year. Not too far off.

But they didn't know the truth.

They didn't know that I had seen my parents change together once. That my mom had looked deep into my dad's golden eyes, calming him and telling him how it was going to be okay and that she'd be there soon. That when mom saw me over dad's shoulder, she looked at me with broken brown eyes and shook her head. And when the grey wolf that was my father left the house, my mother didn't look back as she followed him outside, shuddering in pain, shaking herself apart until she, too, was a wolf. Leaving me alone until Isabel had shown up magically three hours later to find me crying in the middle of the kitchen floor, the box of cereal that I'd knocked off the counter strewn around me, bruises on my knees from falling off the counter.

When I was seven, right before mom and dad changed again for the year, I asked them if I could come this year. Dad's eyes darkened in anger and fear until I looked down, tears starting to fall, and apologized, not knowing what I was sorry for. It wasn't until I was ten that I began to realize how much my father hated his wolf form and the loss that comes with it.

When I was eleven, I snuck into the forest to draw birds and I found the pack. I began to draw their eyes, quietly and slowly. Each member of the pack, naming them as I went. Paul. Ulrik. Olivia. Grandpa. But when I caught my father's golden eyes, he and the pack turned and ran, leaving me alone, just as he did every single year.

That's not to say it was all bad. Summers were the best time of the year. Mom and dad laughed and baked and swung me around and were in general the best parents ever. Dad taught me music from the time I could hold a guitar. Mom showed me advanced math. I showed them the homework for the year and talked about Christmas and the books I'd read and the art I'd done interspersed with the photographs on the walls.

The rest of the pack were awesome too. Olive took the beautiful photographs every year that we framed and hung all over the house. She showed me how to walk silently through the woods so that I could draw the shy creatures who lived there. Grandpa, who spent five years asking me to call him Beck because he said he didn't deserve to be my grandpa, would barbeque twice a week, making up for the lack of ribs and burgers in the winter. Ulrik would speak to me in German until I knew it almost as well as English. He made me promise not to tell how often he swore and would wink at me every time he started swearing. The first time I swore in German, quietly and under my breath, Ulrik snickered until dad looked at him suspiciously.

But these summer months were short, leaving the winters long and dark. Isabel was a saint sometimes. For the first two years of my life, I'd cry for a week after my parents left, calming only when Isabel took me outside. At three, I ran away every night, running through the woods looking for the golden clearing I dreamed of all winter. Each night, I'd fall asleep in a different location, waking to the sound of Isabel or Cole or both calling my name frantically. When I was six, I spoke exclusively in German for a week because she wouldn't bring my parents back. When I was ten, I went home with friends after school for three days without talking to her. Instead of being angry, she simply came and picked me up early from school and took me to Duluth and bought me a stack of books. That night I'd curled up in her lap and cried for the first time since I was four.

When I was fourteen, Cole found the cure.

No one had told me. I didn't even know they were looking. I found out in the best way possible - I woke up on Christmas morning, padded down the stairs to the cozy main room where Isabel and I had put a tree up, and found them in front of the fire drinking what smelled like hot chocolate with peppermint. I froze.

"Mom?" I whispered, "Dad?" They looked up and their faces burst into grins.

"Merry Christmas sweetheart," dad said, holding out the arm my mom wasn't tucked under. I ran to them, bypassing the arm and heading straight for his lap, sobbing as I buried my face in his chest. I felt them both holding me close as I cried out thirteen years of lonely Christmases on their shoulders.

"Liebchen, why are you crying?" A familiar voice teased. I looked up.

"Uncle Ulrik!" I cried, then proceeded to tell him how he should have told me about this. My parents looked at me in alarm. Mom was completely lost, dad's small knowledge of German allowing him to catch enough of the gist to relay my scolding to Mom.

That night, we had a real Christmas dinner for the first time. Isabel never cooked, knowing that by the night I simply wanted a cup of tea and a book to hide from the massive sense of loss I hid for hours on Christmas day. But this year, Mom and Dad cooked together in tandem singing Christmas songs loudly (and in mom's case, badly). Isabel and Cole sat at the bar with glasses of wine, Ulrik and Grandpa in the nearby living room arguing about what Christmas movie to watch, and Olivia everywhere taking photos. I sat at the massive wooden kitchen table, drunk with happiness that my family was all together at Christmas.


End file.
